Hello,

my name is Tom. My motivation to start meditation about 3 years ago was stress relief. I began with Transcendental Meditation, since about half a year i practice insight meditation.

Now i feel like the things that i have been working for are not the things that make me happy. For example many trainings and tests i participated in, today they mean nothing to me. In my honest oppinion the next step may be an action step: like a new way to earn money, spend my time with things that mean something to me.

Please share your experience: in words, book recommendations, youtube videos, everything you might think would be appropriate for this step on the path. (edit: do you have an idea how to name this situation in terms of Dharma? So i could do some research on my own.)

(please note: my native language is German, i did my best to write in english )

Thanks to everyone who shares his experience on this topic!

Have a nice day,
Tom

Hi Tom, 

Welcome to this forum.



So you feel like things you've been working on are not making you happy. This situation can be called, in buddhist models, sometimes:
1. Not-seeing-how-things-are: that nothing exhibits constancy, even happiness; or
2. Looking for sources of happiness in actions that do not generate happines (e.g., inflicting pain on self or others; practicing something that creates stress or prevent well-being/happiness from arising); or
3. Not creating reliable causes of well-being, etc.

Aka: dukkha (sometimes translated "stress"). Aka: annicca (non-permanence). 


I would state broadly that buddhist models are generally focused on reliable causes of well-being and that such reliable well-being is to align with actual conditions, chiefly if something is conditioned to arise, it inherently has the condition to pass. Whoa =]  

Some conditions are very oppressive to well-being --- even just sickness and accidental injury -- and so one has to be able to see conditions as they are and figure out what can mind do reliabley to improve or bear these conditions?


And causality: What arises in a vacuum? I don't know of anything arising on its own. Among humans/sentients we apparently influence/impact/co-arise with each other. Even a rock rolling down hill influences other rocks, surfaces..

Here are five traits of a dharma teacher from the Theravadan canon, Anguttara Nikaya 5.159, that one can aspire to use for teaching oneself:
1. Teach (onesself) step-by-step;
2. Teach (onesself) about cause-and-effect;
3. Teach (onesself) with a mind of compassion;
4. Teach (oneself) without the purpose of any material gain;
5. Teach (oneself) without disparaging and/or promoting self or others.

These five rules encourage one to find something reliable, to go step-wise, to be not dependent on unreliable payments (like actual money currency or popularity status or reputation), to avoid learning something that puts others/self down nor self-promotes, and, keenly, to learn -- with compassion -- what is cause-and-effect.


To see cause-and-effect is not always simple and takes step-wise practice; some decisions are easy (i.e., I should be on time with work); some decisions have longer timeframes to see the potential outcomes of actions.

And one studies what causes am I/you trying to put in motion and why? Do I want to cause relationships? Do I want to cause end of relationships? Why? What is this "I" trying to cause and get at this moment? Do I want to cause job change? Do I want to cause job creation? What role does "I" want to put in motion? What am "I" trying to obtain and is that condition reliable, for how long and under what circumstances? How does "I" see or use others? What is reliable?


Sooo, naturally, one will be breaking "the Golden Rule" despite oneself just as a person usually doesn't ace every single test in years of classes. Therefore, developing compassion for oneself, an animal trying to learn a reliable understanding and source of action, is helpful to oneself and for sharing compassion for others.


Best wishes. I hope you enjoy and find useful the company here.


editx3
 

Hi Tom,

One of the problems I've seen people face when considering the sort of change you seem to be contemplating is making enough money to satisfy their mundane everyday needs while they put their plans into action. So while you contemplate, you might want to have a look at Dorothy L. Sayers' "Why Work?" (If you're not a theist you may need to be ready to drop her references to God, but her message is still useful I think).

I offer that not to guide you in any given direction, nor to encourage or dissuade you. It's just something I found useful to let me be more accepting of doing a job I didn't particularly like, while I put the various parts of a plan together to move to another job that I *did* like.

Thank you for your contribution. Some parts of the text were inspiring.

Would you like to share some of your personal experience concerning your job change?

Hi Tom,

Further to "Sleety Dribble"'s comments, please consider exchanging the feeling of shame for a logical understanding of animal conditions and compassion for the same: we are animals, even if 'smarter' animals, with a sense of own consciousness and so what you described is what any human animal works with --- what I want, what I need, what I am, etc.

What does shame do to help, which awareness of conditions and adjusting behaviour accordingly cannot*? I would suggest that a feeling of shame is hard on the brain and shuts down full brain (creative) thinking. =]

With awareness and behavioural adjustments and perseverance, one can always re-committ to volunteering and/or donating sustainabley (within one's budget) for other beings at any moment to practice support and recognition of others.  

From the perspective I know, people on this site do volunteer and donation activities despite school, work and family and throughout the challenge of own egoic volatilities (strong emotions). So I speculate you, too, already volunteer and/or donate for others. This is generosity (aka: dana) and regard for fellow beings.

So: compassion for being a human animal with self-serving tendancies and practical adjustments (which, again, I speculate you already do).

_________
*Shame can be a useful spark for changing behaviour in regards to a particular conduct, though, and maybe you meant this, too, versus continuing shame as a mindset, which I think would be counter-productive.

Concerning this topic Godwin Samararatne said some simple, yet powerful words:

Learn to forgive yourself too for all the mistakes you have made in the past, not holding onto these wounds by having guilt and remorse in relation to them; and also letting go of the wounds that have been created by others. Learn to accept yourself as you are, and learn to accept others as they are, without an image of how you or they should be. Learning to be gentle to oneself and gentle to others.

Thanks to this forum, some meditation and having a walk, i feel more calm and centered. In an adequate state of mind to go on.

Blessings,
Tom

There's not a lot to say. The main thing was that I came to see how much I was clinging to the idea of the ideal job, where the *most* ideal would be financial independence so I wouldn't have to work at all.

Sayers's essay helped me see that and furthermore made me consider the possibility that a job wasn't merely something to be tolerated, but that it could act as a key part of my overall spiritual path.

So I now see a job not as good or bad but something that, like everything else, merely arises and passes away and so is excellent fodder for gaining insight.